Boys' Tennis: Ames scores district title

Wednesday

SIOUX CITY — The Ames boys' tennis team wasn't perfect Wednesday. The Little Cyclones will just have to settle for pretty darn great.

Four players — two singles competitors and one doubles pairing — punched their tickets to the state tournament as the Little Cyclones claimed a district tournament championship.

“Our goal as a team was to try to get that district title and get as many people as we could to the individual state tournament,” Ames coach Dustin Rhoads said. “Today went about as planned. It was a pretty great day for Ames boys' tennis. Just short of being perfect.”

The maximum number of participants Ames could have gotten through was six with the top-two singles players and top-two doubles teams moving on to state. Timmy Ellis defeated teammate John Kim in the singles finals as both players moved on while only Nate Withers and Nick Matthews made the finals for Ames in doubles. David Kim and Nate Wilson came up just short with a third-place finish.

“Lost in the third set a really close match,” Rhoads said of David Kim and Wilson's 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 semifinal contest, “but still battled back and got third, which I was happy for them to do because once you know you can't make state anymore, it's not easy to play that consolation match.”

David Kim and Wilson won their third-place match 6-2, 6-1.

“They played well,” Rhoads said.

Withers and Matthews scored the doubles championship with a 6-2, 6-4 title-game victory.

Ellis claimed a district title by starting with back-to-back straight-set victories in the quarters and semis.

“I was really proud of our guys,” Ellis said. “Everybody stepped up.”

Ellis then defeated Kim, 6-0, 6-0 to go the whole day without dropping a game.

“It was awesome getting both players in,” Rhoads said.

Ames now will look ahead to substate play for dual competition Saturday and the individual state meet later this month.

“We'll have to play well moving forward,” Rhoads said. “We've had a solid season. If we win our first round, we'll advance to the state quarterfinals which was kind of the realistic goal for the team this year, to get back there where they got last year and from there we've got nothing to lose. Just trying to play loose, have fun and take advantage of the opportunity.

“These guys have played a ton of tennis. It'll come down to practicing up these next two weeks and focusing on small details to really try to fine tune things to get ready for team state and individual state.”

Hopes are high for this group heading into the home stretch.

“I think we can do well,” Ellis said. “Being paired up in district with Marshalltown and Mason City and Valley, that's really doable, and I think we've improved a lot.

“I'm looking forward to going far in the postseason. We can really make progress there.”

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